f a c in g t h e s t o r m
By V oW « “Vn“
Through these years of “ progress” we have reared our edifices and erected our Babels . . . and now the most valuable piece of real estate may be a hole in the ground in which to hide from our own inventions. But we need not be alarmed nor afraid of evil tidings for our hearts can be fixed, trusting in the Lord. The account of our Lord’s stilling the tempest carries a great lesson for us here. I still believe that He stilled the waves although we are being told that He only quieted the disciples! We read (Matt. 8:24), that “there arose a great tempest.” Well, we are in quite a tem pest today. I read in the next verse that the panicky disciples aroused the sleep ing Master saying, “ Lord, save us, we perish.” They were alarmed . . . and so are we! They did not need to be for the Lord of creation was in the boat. He arose and rebuked them for their minds were on the storm instead of on the Saviour. There is another “ AROSE” : “ Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.” When He arose the storm abated. It always does. But He lives in us now; we are His body. He arises when we arise. We get panicky and call on God to do for us what He expects us to do in His Name. We need to arouse our selves and face the tempest in the authority of Christ. The storm is devil ish; we face demon powers of darkness but greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. We need more than an alarming, we need an arising to meet the storm in the Name of the Saviour. There is another mood, half-brother to ALARMISM, the mood of DEFEAT ISM. “We perish!” cried these storm- beset disciples. Nowadays the saints worry a lot about the big, bad wolf. The wolf that threatens us today is both big and bad but I am not so concerned about the wolfishness of the devil’s wolves as I am bothered about the sheepishness of the Lord’s sheep. Recently a sermon was preached on the subject, “ A Timid Church In A Tortured World.” Too many frightened saints are living a pre- Pentecost life, “ Behind closed doors for fear of the Jews.” Sometimes I go to a Pag* Nineteen
I T is almost useless to talk about crisis these days. Nobody pays any attention to it. Somebody has said that when the average preacher is not talking about crisis, he is talking about a challenge . . . and nobody wants to hear about that either. We have had a steady diet of crises for forty years and now when the prophet yells the people only yawn. Of course this apathy fits into the devil’s strategy for he would stupefy us when God wants to startle us. “ The greatest cause for alarm is the absence of alarm.” The tragedy is, we are hard ened to a sense of crisis right in the midst of the greatest emergency of all time. So fearful is our extremity that no words in our present vocabulary can describe it. All our blood-curdling, hair- raising phrases are too pale to paint the picture. Strangely enough, while some preachers water down the Book of Reve lation, it is the scientists who have turned to the apocalyptic. We face a godless paganism, the head- ing-up of all the sinister, demonic powers of Antichrist. The most embarrassing thing about it all is that the church has the answer to the world’s need but from the way most Christians live, no one would suspect it. The early church could not be ignored. Everybody knew they were in town. The Christians of the Catacombs could not be dismissed with a smile. The world does not take the church seriously because the church does not take herself seriously. There ought
to be enough vitality about us at least to disturb the ungodly. We have the answer to the world dilemma. But we are not going to meet the situation with ALARMISM. It is more interesting to preach on “ What Is the World Coming To?” but our chief message is “He Who has Come to the World.” John the Baptist did not major on beholding the sin of the world but beholding Him who came to take that sin away. To be sure, we need preaching on sin and the plight of the church and the state of the world. Surely we need to explode some gospel dynamite under a host of Sunday morning church bench- warmers. But sensational sermons on the atom bomb will not do it. Our problem is not atomic but Adamic, not the atom bomb over our heads but the Adam na ture in our hearts. We are frightened over the wrong thing. We fear them that kill the body but we fear not Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. We need a recovery of the fear of God which led Noah to build the ark, which is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. Never mind alarming people with that! Better scare them into heaven than lull them into hell! But mere alarmism is not enough. When your neighbor’s house is on fire, he must be aroused to his danger. But if he is only alarmed, he may act most foolishly, throw clocks out of the win dows and carry pillows downstairs. Seri ous alarm must be combined with sober action. We do live in an alarming hour.
MARCH
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